1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a toner cartridge for supplying toner to an image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a conventional toner cartridge, there is one which has a container in which a discharging opening for housing toner and discharging the toner inside is provided, and a mixer journaled in the container in a rotatable manner and conveys the toner contained in a container along an inner wall while agitating the toner by rotational drive and sends out the tone from the discharging opening. A screw is configured such that an outer periphery part of the screw is arranged at a position close to the inner wall of the container.
However, in the conventional toner cartridge described above, a gap is formed between the mixer and the inner wall of the container. Therefore, the toner accumulates in the gap between the mixer and the inner wall of the container as a remaining amount of the toner in the container becomes little. This leads to a problem that the accumulated toner cannot be discharged.
In order to resolve the above problem, there is a toner cartridge including: a container which contains the toner and provided with a discharging opening for discharging the contained toner; and a agitating member which is connected to a rotational axis journaled in the container and is for sending out the toner from a sending out opening by conveying the toner along an inner wall while agitating the toner contained in the container by the rotational axis rotationally driving, wherein the agitating member includes a base part having a predetermined elastic deformation on a side of the rotational axis and a conveying member which is arranged outside the base part in a radial direction, rubs the inner wall of the container, and has a front edge part having larger elastic deformation than the base part (for example, refer to Jpn. Pat. Appln. Publication No. 10-282774).
However, in this case, when the front edge part of the conveying member rubs the inner wall of the container, stress is applied to the toner accumulated on the inner wall by sliding friction between the front edge part and the container. Thereby, there is a case that the properties of the toner changes and clumps (so-called coarse powder) are generated. Such generation of clumps has led to generation of a clump image on a printing surface of paper, and been an interference in improving image quality in an image forming processing.
The present invention is invented in order to solve the above problem. An object of the present invention is to provide a toner cartridge capable of preventing the toner from remaining at a bottom part of the toner container in the toner cartridge inserted in the image forming apparatus, and thereby, contributing to improvement of image quality in an image forming processing.